ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the transformation of George Gordon Byron's Alpine journal into Manfred's soliloquy of the private discourse of the epistolary journal into the public discourse of the dramatic poem. It examines the significance of what Byron retains, what he omits, and what he adds in the process. In each case, the transformation is from what Anne K. Mellor calls Romantic irony into what McGann calls the Romantic ideology. The first six and a half lines are essentially a summary of the preceding scene. Then Manfred makes the 'turn to Nature' that McGann considers characteristic of the Romantic ideology. The poem omits all the political, economic, and social contexts a context of which Byron is aware of him as a part. In turning his Alpine journal into Manfred's soliloquy, Byron has, at every point, reduced Romantic irony into a 'pure and unmixed' expression of the Romantic ideology.
